


Not in Kensington Any More

by gardnerhill



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Crack, Crossover, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 08:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2017590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes’ fame reaches even beyond certain borders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not in Kensington Any More

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2014 July Watson’s Woes Prompt #24, brought to you by rojo3131: **On the Track.** Picture prompt: 

Watson was dozing in the train compartment when a strange, painful yank woke him up, as if the train had slammed on the brakes for two seconds then resumed travel. Blinking, he sat up, wondering how far they’d travelled since leaving Edinburgh.

Holmes sat opposite him in the compartment, looking out the window with a grim look on his face – not his customary reaction to having such a satisfactory conclusion to a case. Frowning a bit himself, Watson looked outside to see what had caught his friend’s attention.

He kept blinking, wondering if perhaps he was still asleep.

“This is not a dream, Watson,” Holmes said, also in a flat grim tone. “I felt the same pull as the one that awakened you. That is when the scenery changed from York to this.”

“This” consisted of a tunnel of greenery, as if the railway had become a living forest surrounding them. The train continued to rock its way along the verdant canopy, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary going on.  
                                                                                                                                                                    
“Good God.” Watson rubbed his eyes. “Did the train take a side-route? Where _are_ we?”

“We may be in one of a dozen possible locations.” Holmes sounded exasperated rather than astonished or frightened. “A client from my earliest days, before your time. Keep watch with me at the windows, and tell me exactly what you see. Exactly what you see.”

_Exactly_ he wanted, _exactly_ he would get. Watson returned his attention to the outside world. The window was halfway down now, instead of being sealed tight against cinders; a smell like a flower garden distracted him. York certainly didn’t smell like that. “Greenery. As if trees were grown together to form this arch around us. Women waving from the trees.” Watson blinked, shook his head. Stared again. “Correction. Women waving from  inside the trees.”

Women, to be precise, waving from half in and half out of the trees, without benefit of a hole to hide them; women slender as branches, stout as trunks. Young laughing women with green hair twined around saplings, older women with green-and-brown hair in solid, settled tree-trunks, middle-aged women with red and brown and gold hair, old crones from bent and bare-branched trees with bald heads and wrinkled like bark.

Watson exhaled. The women were still there, smiling and waving. _Exactly_ , Holmes had said. “Holmes. There are dryads outside.”

Squirrels clung to the branches as the train rattled past. Perfectly ordinary squirrels, if you ignored that they were the size of medium-sized dogs. “Welcome, Sons of Adam! Welcome!” they cried. In English. With Kentish accents. And if you ignored that too.

Holmes nodded. “Narnia,” he said. “That means one particular client wishes my assistance. Oh, shut up!” he snapped out the window at the Alsatian-sized rabbits running alongside the train, cheering and hailing his approach.

“One client?” Watson felt a bit light-headed. “Are we to assist the Queen of the Fairies, perhaps?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Watson, there’s no such thing as fairies here,” Holmes said irritably, pulling the window shut and searching about his person. “Really, this is extremely inconvenient of him. One would think he could contact me in a less dramatic fashion, but needs must, I’m afraid. Snuff?”

Giant cheering rabbits, talking squirrels, strange women lying about in trees, but no fairies. Made perfect sense. Dazed, Watson reached over to accept the snuffbox, and then just sat and looked at the beautiful thing. It was solid gold, inlaid with emeralds, with an O and superimposed Z inscribed on the lid. “Er, Holmes…”

Holmes waved one impatient hand. “Another client, another place.”


End file.
